Disgraced Newark Mayor Sharpe James tells his own story in new book

Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James held a small book signing event Saturday afternoon at a Jersey City library for his memoir, “Political Prisoner.”

James, 78, was convicted of fraud in 2008 for conspiring to rig the sale of nine city lots to his mistress, who resold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison.

In the basement of the Miller Library at 489 Bergen Ave., James spoke of his political career and described different passages of his memoir to 20 people in a large room that had more seats than attendees.

One man asked him how he felt the night he defeated Kenneth A. Gibson, Newark’s first African-American mayor, in 1986.

“It is hard to replace a legend. I was nervous and scared,” he said. “He was the first, the second don’t get that kind of respect.”

In response to a question about education in prisons, James shared a much more recent experience of being assigned to kitchen duty in prison, which he said he avoided by asking to tutor other prisoners.

When his students refused to take exams and expected him to simply be their friend, he said, he switched over to driving buses for the prison.

In the back of the room, two people manned a table with soft and hardcover copies of his memoir. On the cover of the book is a photo of a towering, smiling James with his hands in his pocket and a subtitle: “You can be indicted, arrested, convicted and sent to prison without committing a crime.”

When asked why he wrote the book, Sharpe told The Jersey Journal “people were giving my legacy without the facts.”

“People were defining me and my legacy and I felt I wanted to tell my story in my own words,” he said.